by Paul Mendez
He regretted that he left without saying goodbye to Ginika. It frustrated him that an institution, if Gilbert’s could be so called, stood between him and a potential friendship in a new city. He wished her all the best, in his heart, and hoped they would see each other again one day. He thought she had every chance of becoming an actress, or whatever she wanted. Her family were not holding her back for the sake of some shady religious principle. Nowhere in the Bible did it say that God’s people should not better themselves academically or arm themselves with secular knowledge. The Awake! magazine was wide-ranging in its grasp of science, technology and modern examples of faith under persecution, but was no substitute for an English degree. He told himself he would look up the Ndukwe family in the phone book. It was hardly Smith or Jones.
His route was to be different from Ginika’s; he followed his dick. He hung around Old Compton Street, in pint-drinking white-man pubs where he had no trouble picking up fat fifty-five-year-olds with big, bouncy arses, who bought weed for him to smoke, lay still on their stomachs and let him fuck them as hard as he could. He stood out among young men of his kind because he maintained that Witness doorstep charm. Teenage boys threw themselves at him on the dance floor at GAY, but he wasn’t interested; his polite friendliness was lost on them. He was into older men, who didn’t care if they looked ugly because they already were, and who gave their strong, workhorse bodies over to sex. One of them took some pictures of him nude on their digital camera and uploaded them to the Gaydar website for him.
He picked up men walking down residential streets, on Tube trains, on buses, in hotel lobbies, in clothing stores. Midweek afternoons were the best time to find horny partnered men working from home with their flats to themselves. The best gave him money out of generosity, without him asking, just to help him on his way because they liked him; the more uptight left money out conspicuously for him to steal, which he never did. His schedule filled up. He learned the Tube map, from Acton to Woodside Park, and started to picture the city above ground, catching buses just to look out of the window. The men he chatted to online, expecting him to be a closet-case from Peckham or Croydon fucking on the down-low, paid his travel, so he wore his jeans low and amended his accent to fit their fantasy, and they either let him leave with the weed or promised it would be there for him when he returned. He almost never did, because there was always someone new round the corner.
The most memorable was a fifty-one-year-old he picked up on a Hackney street one hot June afternoon, having just said goodbye to another guy. Jesse was in a bouncy mood, having been given £100 by the fuck as a gift, and walked past a white van whose owner gave him a wide, solicitous smile Jesse wasn’t initially sure was supposed to be for him. They got into the back of the van. It was the first time Jesse had touched and tasted a black man, short and stout, with a muscular chest and arse, his body covered with tight curly hair. His dick was thick and his balls heavy, but he was passive, and didn’t mind a quickie. He was perfectly prepared, with condoms and lube. Their thick lips mushed together. He told Jesse to call him Daddy, and even offered him a job. He was born in Antigua, had lived in the U.K. since the age of four, and ran his own building company. Jesse might have accepted but he was enjoying his freedom too much. They never got to meet again. Jesse wished Brother Thomas Woodall had offered him a job, working with him as a painter and decorator. Jesse had watched him from across the road, once, on a beautiful sunny day in Great Bridge, working alone on a shopfront, the space behind him empty and white, while he painted the inside window frames, the sun shining right onto him. The outer frames were already finished, blue and white; the lines were straight and the corners were true. The blue and white matched what Brother Woodall was wearing that day, a blue T-shirt under his white dungarees. His eyes were blue, his skin was white, his hair was blond and curly, the golden hairs on his forearms fine. He had a bit of a belly, a bit of an arse. Jesse saw Brother Woodall at the next meeting, shook his hand and complimented him on his job. I’m saving up so that I can afford you in my room, Jesse told him. Completely innocently, Brother Woodall said, Well, I’m sure I can do you mates’ rates.
Jesse could admit that he had always been in love with Brother Woodall—Uncle Tom, as Jesse had been encouraged to call him—maybe since that very first knock on his mother’s door with Graham and the Watchtower and Awake!, when Jesse was far too young to know what he was feeling; far too young to feel anything at all. He should’ve touched him. He had lost everything anyway. He had censored himself, punished himself, boxed in emotions that couldn’t just have been sinful, being so strong and apparent in one so young, but must have been natural, there since birth; he’d held himself back and still been disfellowshipped. The credit he’d built up working all those hours on the ministry, and spending all those long years, just to save the family’s face, living in the home of someone who had cut him off in her mind, had gone in an instant. The reputation that had been bestowed upon him as an example to the youth and a refreshment to the old, disappeared with a knock of Brother Grimes’s biblical gavel.
Even when Jesse was a sinless child, aged eight or nine, he craved to sit in Uncle Tom’s lap and lay his hands wherever he wanted, to be the centre of his attention. Uncle Tom had been in his life from so long ago he was like a father, the father he wished he had, and Jesse would not stop until he found another who made him feel as if he was the most perfect, important person in the universe, by being the most perfect, important person in the universe and putting Jesse alone on a pedestal. If only his mother had married Uncle Tom instead; if the whole universe was different, Jesse would’ve grown up in his care; he would’ve watched him standing at the sink, shaving, with just his towel sitting low on his hips.
* * *
—
The commercial listings on Gaydar intrigued Jesse all the more as his funds decreased; it wasn’t difficult for him to attract men, and he’d established a connection with those of a certain age and status. He visited apartments with double-height ceilings, in wealthy parts of town, and left with his balls and pockets empty. It made sense that he should use his body, while he could, to earn money. Len was in his sixties and not looking for the sex Jesse would’ve happily given him, but was nevertheless the most polite and genteel of all the men who contacted him. He seemed to be impressed by the fact that Jesse looked the way he did, yet could spell, and formulate whole sentences—correct use of apostrophes and all—which Jesse found patronising but laughed off. When he went to the Internet café and logged on there was always a message from Len, asking how he’d been, reminding him to stay safe, wanting to hear the latest episode in Jesse’s story, whom he’d had sex with, whether he’d been looking for a job, which book he was reading. Why don’t you become an escort, he said in his river-deep voice. You might as well be paid for what you are doing already. You’ll be successful. It’s a viable career choice in the twenty-first century. Len even invited Jesse to move in with him rent-free while he was finding his feet, in exchange for a few errands. He was a filmmaker, he said, and lived in a tower block in Camberwell with his old friend Billy and a bunch of waifs and strays, but they were one big happy family, and there was always room for one more, especially someone nice, he said.
The hostel scene had grown stale. With all the confidence his growing list of conquests had given him, Jesse had made a move on Jeff—the big Aussie who liked to share a mull on the stips—which hadn’t gone down well. Not that Jeff kicked off about it; Jesse felt Jeff rather enjoyed the attention. A lawyer in Shoreditch he had been fucking gave him lots of coke, and high as a terrorist, Jesse crashed back through the hostel front door ready to devour any man who crossed his path.
“I want to suck your dick,” Jesse had told Jeff, his thoughts running even faster than his mouth. “I’ll do a better job than your no-lips girlfriend. You’ll be able to teach her after having me, and if she dunt do it right you’ll know where to come. Look a’these lips. These a
re dick-worship lips.” Jeff, himself drunk and his girlfriend out at work, kept laughing. Jesse could tell Jeff was running it over in his mind, and every time he laughed, Jesse said something filthier. In between laughs Jeff said something like I can’t, I have a girlfriend. I’m straight. I would, if you had a pussy, but I’m straight!
Of course, the next day, Jesse could barely show his face. Having paid a week in advance, he packed his belongings. He was glad not to see anyone he knew on the way out—it was an odd time of day when a lot of the residents, being hospitality staff, were either on their way to work or about to leave. In Camberwell, Len helped Jesse to set up his commercial profile on Gaydar, using some fresh black-and-white images they shot. As soon as he paid the subscription he started to receive messages, and that very same night, saw his first client—a passive, hairy Welshman who lived in a ninth-floor flat overlooking Soho—for a hundred and fifty pounds.
Chapter 3
“At this point we’d pray,” said Jesse, eyes closed, as the steam from the mushroom ragù, served as a gravy, condensed on his chin and lips.
“Okay, then,” said Owen, expectantly.
Jesse’s eyes opened as if the fear of God had been put into him, making Owen smile. A bold shaft of orange-yellow light shone across the back wall. “What, you want me to say a prayer?” Jesse said.
“Quick, before the food gets cold.” Owen closed his eyes tight, like a child’s, then opened one slightly to watch him. Jesse laughed.
“Alright,” said Jesse. He wasn’t going to ruin his appetite, before his first Christmas dinner, by traipsing guiltily back to Jehovah. He had never prayed, anyway, not really. He said words in his head but could not believe he was speaking to a real being, who was actively listening. As far as he was concerned, a conversation had to be between at least two voices; otherwise he was talking to himself, and he was not mad. He had been telling himself a lot, recently, that he was not mad.
“Oh, we’re saying them silently to ourselves, are we?” Owen asked, a lightly teasing smile on his face, the sort Jesse normally found flirtatious and appealing, but now experienced as aggressive, as if Owen didn’t know what he was making Jesse do.
“No, sorry, okay. It’s just, I’m out of practice,” Jesse said, keeping a smile on his face so as not to push Owen away. “I can’t involve God in my life any more.”
“It doesn’t have to be a long one,” said Owen, more caressingly. “I just want the privilege of hearing how you would put it. I know little about Jehovah’s Witnesses and what they do. It’s fascinating to me.”
“Okay,” said Jesse, and he closed his eyes, then opened them again. He was ready to admit he would do anything for Owen. A potential client had said to Jesse, once: I bet you don’t let anyone near you. If there was anyone Jesse would want to let in, if there was anyone he would trust with his past, his tears, his laughter, his problems, his body, it was Owen.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” said Owen. “Not if it traumatises you.”
Jesse closed his eyes, cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
“Dear Heavenly Father Jehovah God. Thank You for the delicious food we’re about to receive. Thank You for the sunny, mild day, the beasts of the Earth, the flying creatures of the heavens and the fish of the sea. Thank You for every day of our lives, and for letting us live with freedom of choice, when the rules You set mean the choice to live by truth is still punishable by death in some countries, even in ours. Thank You for bringing Owen and me into each other’s lives so we can at least spend this day suffering together, when really, we should be with our families who should love us unconditionally, but don’t, because of the rules You set, and because we don’t wish to live our lives by the lies You would rather we told. Anyway, before this fatty and bloody joint of beef on my plate gets cold, I will ask You to wake up from Your slumber, come to understand that we all just want to love each other and be happy, and stop letting people be taken advantage of, raped, killed, starved, made homeless, impoverished, bullied, scourged, and all the other things You let Your creations suffer. I hope You are actually there so that I didn’t spend the first nineteen years of my life talking to myself, but I also hope You’re not there, so I don’t have to hold You to account for all the evil that’s happening, caused by people who think they’re the good ones and have got You on their side. I ask this prayer in the name of Your Son and Reigning King Christ Jesus, whose birthday You don’t even allow Your supposed true followers to celebrate. Merry Christmas. And thank You very, very much for champagne and weed. And for Owen. And Joy Division. And Sugababes. And Destiny’s Child. Amen!”
Owen’s eyes were already open when Jesse opened his. So was his mouth.
“Cheers,” said Jesse, triumphantly, holding up his glass. Owen took his as if unsure, and they clinked.
“Merry Christmas,” said Owen, who had paled slightly. “That was certainly from the heart!”
“Were you expecting the Lord’s Prayer?”
“Or a version of it?”
Perhaps, Jesse thought, Owen had not experienced such honesty at his gilded Cambridge chapels. “The Witnesses believe in personal prayer. It’s another way of ours to distance ourselves from false Christianity.”
Owen shook his head. He was smiling at Jesse in a blushing, high-cheekboned way nobody had ever regarded him with before. If Jesse hadn’t been so hungry, he might have become nauseous with infatuation.
“Alright. Well,” Owen said. “Let’s eat.”
The thinly carved pink beef came apart like ham. It would have felt like hacking through a loaf of stale bread were he eating it at home, or at Graham’s parents’ house, where they used to cook the meat so long it turned grey. Owen had asked Jesse, when searing it, how he liked it cooked, and because Jesse had never thought about it, he’d said, Well done, please. The kitchen was L-shaped, with the dining table behind Jesse; Owen stood at the hob with his back to the window. Jesse was picking parsley leaves from their stalks and collecting them in a bowl, playing the Bad Boy Remix of “He Loves U Not” by Dream in his head, despite the shuffle of songs Owen played from his iPod. Jesse hated parsley, growing up. It dominated the disgusting pre-made gloopy white sauce that accompanied those dry and stringy fillets of cod his mother pictured herself as a fine middle-class housewife for serving.
“Well, then there we have a problem,” Owen had said, as the rich beef smell went straight up Jesse’s nose and taunted his empty stomach. “I eat mine rare.”
He was not allowed to eat bloody meat. From as early as he could remember, Jesse and other Witness children had been made to carry an Identity Card with them, refreshed each January. It was signed by their parents, and an elder, and said that if Jesse were to be taken into hospital care, as a minor with none of his guardians present, doctors could be sued if they decided to treat him with blood-based products. When he became a baptised Brother, he was given a more explicit “No Blood” card that did not have to be signed by his parents, showing that it was his own decision to disallow doctors from treating him with blood.
“Fuck it. I’ll take it just like you do,” he said. He’d been sucking dicks for seven months and here he was worried about a juicy steak.
“Are you sure?” Owen said, as if he was knowingly leading Jesse into temptation.
“I worked in a restaurant for a couple of days when I first moved to London and couldn’t believe so many people were ordering steaks with blood circling round the plate.”
“Of course, yeah. ‘The Blood Issue.’ Anya deals a lot with that sort of thing,” Owen said. The sizzling got louder as he pressed down the fatty rind on the surface of the pan. “Did I tell you she was a barrister in child protection? Jehovah’s Witness parents have been happier to let their child die than allow them to receive blood.” Jesse thought about Fraser’s family tragedy but decided not to ruin his day with Owen by talking about him. “I didn
’t know their abstinence extends to the consumption of blood as a food product as well.”
“That’s the word the Bible uses. Abstain from blood. Act fifteen verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine,” Jesse said, as if preaching once again from the rostrum at his Kingdom Hall. “Everything we eat has to be well done, to the point of being barely edible. Burnt to a crisp. Otherwise, it’s unclean and unfit for consumption.”
“And is it halal?” Owen said the latter word with a throaty non-English intonation, giving equal stress to both syllables.
“What’s halal?” Jesse copied.
“In Muslim communities, only meat that has been bled in a certain way, and prayed over, can be eaten. Permitted food is called halal.”
“No, nothing like that. We just buy any old shit from the supermarket like everybody else does and cook it till it could be anything.”
“What about black pudding?” said Owen, smiling.
Jesse tensed his stomach and pulled a heaving face.
“Isn’t that pig’s blood?”
“Congealed with groats, dried onion and spices.”
Jesse shook his head. “I don’t know how anyone could eat that, religious or not.”
“But it’s supposed to be a delicacy in the Black Country. We used to eat Black Country sausage at home, when I was a kid, on a Saturday, with the grill. Tasty stuff. It’s supposed to have aphrodisiacal properties.”
Jesse caught the little flutter of suggestion in Owen’s teasing and internally blushed. “Some things we’re thankful not to be made to eat,” he said, playfully.
“You’re still using the present tense,” Owen said, as he transferred the joint to a roasting rack in the hot oven.
